Connecting with God through poetic articulations of lived, embodied experience–engaging texts from the Revised Common Lectionary for Christian churches, other biblical and spiritual texts, and evocations of the divine in rituals and other public events–always accepting lived reality as a primary source of divine revelation and mystery.

Idols of Our Day

Idols are not always objects. Like the Pharisee in Jesus’ story, we can bow down before our own attitudes and habits, seeing only our self-publicity, our own estimation, or as in his case, and maybe ours, his righteousness, looking down his patrician nose, thinking so well of himself that no one else counts in his endless internal census of who is good and who not.

MINDBODY Core Values

We too can assess others based on what they do for work, what kind of car they drive or home they own (or don’t), who they are, whom they love, their race, or where they or their ancestors came from, of course gender, or gender identity, ability, weight—aah weight! a whole culture overrun with judging bodies as fat, old, wrinkled, bad hair, with wrong breast or penis size, so much judgment!!!!

And yet I know few people who think so highly of themselves—certainly some in the public eye come to mind, with egos large enough to fill Yankee Stadium, and you want to think they are healthy but sometimes it looks like insecurity more than sanity—most of us carrying around some sense of inadequacy induced by Madison Avenue or bullied into us on playgrounds, in locker rooms or summer camps long ago.

All humans err but few of us want to be reminded of our sins or these days to so openly declare them like Jesus’ friend the tax collector; sin such an old-fashioned word in a world obsessed with tweets, instagrams, selfies, sexting, and well-rehearsed reality television where confession is intended to boost ratings and perhaps land a contract, at least a headline, for the one who tells all. Now it is Judge Judy absolving or assigning penitential rites.

Still Jesus comes again, reminding us that simple humility is not only wise but also divine—even if Caesar and his saplings of the day jeered as do those now who seek to trump common sense and dignity in a sea of denial masquerading as self-importance and power believing they now make the rules. If it were only human rules they might be right, but instead it is a more basic truth:what is pumped up must sooner or later come down.